"…an ambitious and important study … Forced Choices is a vivid reminder of the way that corporate managements often attempt to contain employee ownership and involvement and to manipulate ownership and involvement plans to increase profits rather than empower workers." — American Journal of Sociology

"This book is clearly going to be a sourcebook for those interested in the conditions that affect employer-worker relations, employee ownership, and the current trends in American industry. It captures the flavor of the struggles of workers and is likely to be a classic in the same sense that Alvin Gouldner's Wildcat Strike has been for well over forty years." — A. Gary Dworkin, University of Houston

"Forced Choices is a great read; a clearly written, engaging story! For those interested in worker ownership, local economic development, the history of company towns, the steel industry, unions or industrial democracy, this is fascinating material." — Robert N. Stern, Industrial and Labor Relations–Cornell University

"This book makes a very important contribution to understanding the dynamics behind the rhetoric of employee ownership." — Teresa Ankney, Hood College

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

PART I. INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Weirton: The Place and Its People
An Ethnography of Class, Community, and Worker Ownership

1. Worker Ownership and Class in America

Worker Ownership
Employee Participation
Paternalism and Class
Class and Class Consciousness
Outline of Chapters

PART II. HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS

2. Forced Choices I: Company Town

The Antecedents of Paternalism: 1909-1933
The Challenge: 1933-1951
Quiescence: 1951-1982

3. Forced Choices II: "Buy It or Lose It"

One Side of Paternalism's Legacy
Divided Loyalties
"Business is Business, Morals is Morals"
The Limits of Dissent
The Final Deal

PART III. WORKERS BY DAY

4. Forced Choices III: Employee Participation

Participation by Decree
The Structure of Employee Participation
Ideology and Employee Participation
Summary

5. A Fragile Trust: The Normative Order of Employee Participation

Facilitators as Industrial Therapists
Workers and Employee Participation
Internal Communications: Public Relations at Work

PART IV. OWNERS BY NIGHT

6. Class and Worker Ownership

Worker Ownership and the "Equity solution"
Owners by Night...
...Workers at Heart

7. The Moral Economy of Worker Ownership

The Value of Labor
Property Rights
Community, Nepotism, and Local Control
Summary

8. The Struggle for Control

A Changing of the Guard
Confrontation
Two Years Later: The Struggle Continues

9. Conclusion

The Lessons of Worker Ownership and Participation at Weirton Steel
Class, Community, and Worker Ownership

Notes


Bibliography

Index